Quotes from Dawn Foster

Faith is about offering emotional and practical help to your neighbours while expecting nothing in return: you do so simply because you think it's needed.

Growing up poor is precisely as demeaning as you'd expect, and while forgiving bullies is easy, reliving those experiences emotionally is deeply upsetting.

Bullying leaves permanent psychological scarring and young people become adept at learning what hurts, verbally and psychologically. Looks, personality and status are all easy targets, and particularly difficult to change.

There is no golden age of public spending for the working class under any form of Conservative future, only the endless pursuit of tax breaks for the comfortably-off.

Working within newspapers, so many of them are so used to the status quo, they're so invested in lobby journalism, and assuming that all politics happens in Westminster... but doing social affairs, I spend a lot of time out of London speaking to people who have been hit by cuts, or disabled, or who have been made unemployed.

Good policymaking is evidence-based, and preventing crime and antisocial behaviour involves fixing the society we all live in, identifying risk factors and demographic characteristics that make some people more likely to become involved in certain crime, and then preventing those offences taking place as often as possible.

Disasters can also be averted, which is why the rigorous approach after Ronan Point was the correct response.

Housing is predominantly presented as a generational issue: millennials aren't able to get on the property ladder in the same way their parents were. But while it's true that intergenerational fairness is an issue, this way of presenting the housing crisis glosses over much.

If shelter is a human right, why not create a national housing service to provide homes for everyone who doesn't have one?

The homeless often feel invisible, allowed to plummet through widening holes in the social safety net, then hidden in doorways from which people avert their eyes.

Public opinion isn't formed independently, but driven by narratives from the political class and the media.

If Freemasons won't be completely open about their membership, should we not say that in all cases membership is incompatible with public service? Asking public servants to either confirm they are not a member of a masonic organisation or to be open when they are won't fully excise the backroom deals or the stench of privilege.

Many benefit cuts hit single parents hardest and punish children by forcing their families into destitution.

I've read enough dreary campus novels to know more than I ever wanted to about the punctured Oxbridge academic psyche, and feel as if I've been through a mid-life crisis dozens of times, purely because I've foolishly grabbed a paperback by an author I've vaguely heard of.

Reading is a pleasure, yes, but not without effort: choosing to read novels purely because they mirror your own experience is stultifying.

Historically marginalised people - by gender, race or nationality - aren't willing to be silent any longer on the crimes of the past and the continuing misrepresentations of historians.

Most people pass through the doors of a hospital as a last resort. By the time you reach a bed, you've probably made a lot of small-scale decisions that, if they didn't cause your affliction, may have exacerbated your symptoms.

Fewer people than you might think seem to have truly enjoyed their formative education and, for those who did not, one theme in particular recurs: the breathtaking cruelty of children.

The long-term effects of privatising both rail and housing, aside from ensuring we live in a country of crumbling infrastructure (in contrast to mainland Europe), is one of diminished social and personal opportunities.

Winter is always the hardest period for rough sleepers because of the climate and the post-Christmas dip in generosity towards anyone begging. And there's a genuine risk to life for anyone having to sleep out as temperatures plummet.

There's a thin line between mockery and endorsement.

For men, the Right Time to become a parent seems to be any time after reaching the age of consent.

For children with special educational needs to receive the help they need to thrive in education, councils need targeted funding that properly addresses the costs of including children in mainstream classrooms with support, or creating space in specialist schools.

Focusing on the gifted always leaves people behind, and portrays working-class people as a repellent hinterland that 'gifted' and 'talented' children need rescuing from.